This invention relates to apparatus and methods for sensing temperature, particularly in the context of semiconductor-based integrated circuits.
It is known in the art to provide a semiconductor device which has the facility to measure temperature in the vicinity of the device. For example, it has been proposed by Kisoo Kim; Hokyu Lee; Sangdon Jung and Chulwoo Kim “ A 366 kS/s 400 μw 0.0013 mm2 frequency-to-digital converter based CMOS temperature sensor utilising multi-phase clock” custom integrated circuits conference 2009 IEE to provide a temperature sensor which uses a temperature-sensitive oscillator and a temperature-insensitive oscillator respectively to increment and decrement a counter in order to give an indication of temperature based on the residual count. However, the present Applicant has appreciated that improvements on this approach are possible.